Basketball Roster

[cbrown]

Today’s result reaffirmed my belief that getting 30 wins out of this roster was a masterful coaching job. The roster is like a bunch of mismatched toys. Every player has significant offensive deficiencies. That’s been the case more times than not. In fact, since Williams and Schofield left, we’ve had one player that was a complete offensive player.

I think great offense usually beats great defense in basketball. The way CRB constructs his rosters wins a lot of games. I just don’t think you can string together 5-6 wins against good-great teams with it. The team that scores more points wins, and our identity is having games (or stretches within games) where we cannot score.

 

[cardvolfan]

Today’s result reaffirmed my belief that getting 30 wins out of this roster was a masterful coaching job. The roster is like a bunch of mismatched toys. Every player has significant offensive deficiencies. That’s been the case more times than not. In fact, since Williams and Schofield left, we’ve had one player that was a complete offensive player.

I think great offense usually beats great defense in basketball. The way CRB constructs his rosters wins a lot of games. I just don’t think you can string together 5-6 wins against good-great teams with it. The team that scores more points wins, and our identity is having games (or stretches within games) where we cannot score.

Kinda like Nate Oats can’t string together more than 4 wins in a row.

 

[cbrown]

Kinda like Nate Oats can’t string together more than 4 wins in a row.

I do think Alabama’s style of play makes it harder for them. They’re so 3-dependent, they sometimes shoot themselves out of games. Barnes’ style of play is less susceptible to that, but he needs to recruit a few guys that can get their own shots when the offense struggles. He had that last year with DK, and we had a great chance of making a FF had we not drawn a terrible matchup in Purdue.

 

[rickyyrs]

Vols need more than two goys that can shoot. When Chaz or ZZ has a bad night, Ganiey is the only other one who can score. The rest of the team is bad. Fleix had what 4 points today. Igor had 2. Need some big men who can score. But i guess if they do not play great defense they will be sitting on the bench.

 

[Rocky Top T]

Need a couple of shooters and dominate inside players

 

[Volsloco]

Kinda like Nate Oats can’t string together more than 4 wins in a row.

What did he do last year?

 

[Go47]

I agree that Coach Barnes did an amazing job with this group. Consider:

ZZ is tough, gritty, a gnat on defense, and plays hard all the time. But he is 5’8 and length at guard often shut him down or guys like Jaxon Robinson easily shot over him. Mashack - defensive genius / super athletic / awesome leader. A total liability on offense. Milicic - great rebounder . . . Not a scorer. Okpara - gave us toughness we didn’t have with Aidoo . . . But very limited offensively. Lanier was a jump shooter . . . Who would go not just cold but ice cold at times.

What Barnes did in making them a TEAM and hiding weaknesses was beyond what I expected this season. Great season.

 

[cardvolfan]

What did he do last year?

I meant to say 5-6 wins. My bad. Oats had enough talent the last few years, but his media-proclaimed greatness wasn’t enough to win the big title.

 

[vavolfan6]

I really don't feel like our roster was as far off as you make it seem. In fact, I'm not sure how you replace some of the qualitues of the guys we had.

I think we were one player away - a big who could post up and generate offense when the guards were having an off day. That's it.

 

[TartanTurff]

Would love to see a Wayne Chism, Dale Ellis, Reggie Johnson or Willie Burton type guy on the floor with Barnes for a couple of seasons,

Once you get to the great 8, you run into teams who have collections of very talented basketball players with very few deficiencies in their offensive, defensive games, they can rebound, run the floor, set picks and play the full width of the court, Barnes' defense first mentality brings a lot of guys to the program who have significant ball handling, shooting, scoring and rebounding/positioning limitations, that can't be coached through in a couple of seasons, Barnes can work a lot of magic with these rosters, but once you get into the rare air of the 8 best teams in the country, the difference in the skill sets are easy to spot, they were easy to see today with a deplorable shooting effort from Tennessee today and Houston make big baskets when they mattered most. The team with the most points wins the game.

 

[HighWaterVol]

I really don't feel like our roster was as far off as you make it seem. In fact, I'm not sure how you replace some of the qualitues of the guys we had.

I think we were one player away - a big who could post up and generate offense when the guards were having an off day. That's it.

Estrella would have an important impact

 

[NighthawkVol]

What did he do last year?

Got an 8 seed in the Elite 8 and a 1 seed that couldn’t hit a shot in the Sweet 16.

 

[livefaith]

Today’s result reaffirmed my belief that getting 30 wins out of this roster was a masterful coaching job. The roster is like a bunch of mismatched toys. Every player has significant offensive deficiencies. That’s been the case more times than not. In fact, since Williams and Schofield left, we’ve had one player that was a complete offensive player.

I think great offense usually beats great defense in basketball. The way CRB constructs his rosters wins a lot of games. I just don’t think you can string together 5-6 wins against good-great teams with it. The team that scores more points wins, and our identity is having games (or stretches within games) where we cannot score.

My son and I are big fans that watch most every game. Before the tournament we discuss this exact thing. Is it even possible that we could go six straight games without that offensive collapse that happens nearly every 3 or 4 games no matter what. Today, we got buried with it in one half.

A narrative that seems never rise to the top in the media this year was how good of a team we were compared to the rankings of the players on the team. There is not a single five-star player on this team. There are actually maybe only a couple of four star players. There are two star zero star and a sprinkling of three star players, that somehow Rick Barnes cobbled into a team that was rated number one in the nation for almost a month. We were easily the most overachieving elite team in the country based on the raw materials at hand. It's honestly unbelievable that we could go as far as we did with this group. And the fact that they had me and a lot of other people believing that they could win one two or three more is truly amazing.

 

[hUTch2002]

I do think Alabama’s style of play makes it harder for them. They’re so 3-dependent, they sometimes shoot themselves out of games. Barnes’ style of play is less susceptible to that, but he needs to recruit a few guys that can get their own shots when the offense struggles. He had that last year with DK, and we had a great chance of making a FF had we not drawn a terrible matchup in Purdue.

You do realize we were a top 20 offense this year, right? Our offense was fine, the execution of it yesterday was not in the first half.

 

[hUTch2002]

I really don't feel like our roster was as far off as you make it seem. In fact, I'm not sure how you replace some of the qualitues of the guys we had.

I think we were one player away - a big who could post up and generate offense when the guards were having an off day. That's it.

And that likely option got hurt in the preseason.

 

[Brave Volunteer]

I say this, fully admitting that I don't know **** about basketball. But from a lay person's perspective, it seems to me the reason Barnes struggles getting to the big dance lies directly in the choices he makes with his roster construction. I know we had a key injury this year, and one guy left unexpectedly early in the season. Maybe those factors would've made a difference, but it really galls me that Bruce Pearl has now managed to reach two final hours in almost the same amount of time at Auburn that Barnes has been at UT with no FF appearances. I refuse to believe it's because Pearl is a better X's and O's guy than Barnes or because Auburn can somehow offer more as a program than UT. It has to come down to roster construction and the players Rick scouts to come here and play for him. How in the hell to do mid major teams like UConn, Gonzaga, Houston, etc manage to construct rosters to get to the final four but we somehow cannot???

 

[njvols]

I really don't feel like our roster was as far off as you make it seem. In fact, I'm not sure how you replace some of the qualitues of the guys we had.

I think we were one player away - a big who could post up and generate offense when the guards were having an off day. That's it.

Major retooling for Barnes. Have confidence w HOG coach and NIL$ that he will do a nice job. Will be interesting to watch. Pretty obvious we need scoring muscle in post and shooters.

 

[Oldvoldad]

Need a couple of shooters and dominate inside players

I will always wonder what this team might have been with a healthy Estrella. I was extremely excited of what his year 2 would look like before the injury

 

[CAVPUT]

I say this, fully admitting that I don't know **** about basketball. But from a lay person's perspective, it seems to me the reason Barnes struggles getting to the big dance lies directly in the choices he makes with his roster construction. I know we had a key injury this year, and one guy left unexpectedly early in the season. Maybe those factors would've made a difference, but it really galls me that Bruce Pearl has now managed to reach two final hours in almost the same amount of time at Auburn that Barnes has been at UT with no FF appearances. I refuse to believe it's because Pearl is a better X's and O's guy than Barnes or because Auburn can somehow offer more as a program than UT. It has to come down to roster construction and the players Rick scouts to come here and play for him. How in the hell to do mid major teams like UConn, Gonzaga, Houston, etc manage to construct rosters to get to the final four but we somehow cannot???

For a while now, I've wondered about our evals. Won't mention names, but when I look at some of our recruits and portal guys the last few years, I just scratch my head and wonder what this staff saw with some of these guys.

 

[Zues1]

Barnes seems to recruit good guys
Guys that want to be coached hard.
Guys that are okay with defense as a priority.

His rosters seem to have one or two guys that are big scoring threats. Problem is, like a clean up man in baseball they will have bad games.

As we've seen year in and year out you need 3/4 starters that will consistently score 12/15+ a game.

 

[BigOrangeNC]

Two elite 8's and only one NBA player on the roster (DK). (Lanier is a fringe NBA player) Compared to a team like Duke which probably has 5+ NBA guys on its roster. That's really good coaching!
I love Barnes but I don't think he is going to attract many of the top offensive players because of style. Kids want to score and not be pulled for one bad defensive possession. His formula is working to build really good teams, but good on good is going to take more explosive offensive playerS than one out of the portal each year. I also hope Boswell stays!

 

[CNeagleVolFan]

Two elite 8's and only one NBA player on the roster (DK). (Lanier is a fringe NBA player) Compared to a team like Duke which probably has 5+ NBA guys on its roster. That's really good coaching!
I love Barnes but I don't think he is going to attract many of the top offensive players because of style. Kids want to score and not be pulled for one bad defensive possession. His formula is working to build really good teams, but good on good is going to take more explosive offensive playerS than one out of the portal each year. I also hope Boswell stays!

He needs to change his tactics a bit in recruiting IMO. Instead of getting one sure fire scorer he needs to try to get 2 or more, and have a well balanced attack. I know we expected more from Dubar, and some others but things happened that were really tragic events and they really affected him. It was a win for him just to play the whole season IMO. I think if we can get McKneely and Gillespie it would be a great start. Gillespie leaving Maryland seems likely, and I really don’t see where else he would rather go than home. I’ve seen Maryland fans and Villanova fans both saying that they think Gillespie to Tennessee is a sure thing, but we will see.

 

[Orange-U-Glad]

Barnes did a great job with a team that had no real talent under the basket. They tried, but they were just outmatched against Houston’s bigs. We spent the entire first half passing the ball around the perimeter and jacking up hurried threes. The 4 teams left all have front lines that simply are better than ours. Guard play matters, but by the time you get to the Elite Eight, everyone has quality guards. The bigs become the difference makers.

 

[CINCYVOL]

I really don't feel like our roster was as far off as you make it seem. In fact, I'm not sure how you replace some of the qualitues of the guys we had.

I think we were one player away - a big who could post up and generate offense when the guards were having an off day. That's it.

You mean like JP Estrella?

 

[LittleCat]

I meant to say 5-6 wins. My bad. Oats had enough talent the last few years, but his media-proclaimed greatness wasn’t enough to win the big title.

You realize winning every 5/6 games is 83% which is a ridiculously high winning percentage. Most championship teams the last decade or so have always hovered between winning 80-90% of games.